As has been recently well-hyped, there are certain restrictions on Florida judge’s use of social networks. It apparently took awhile for everyone to notice a November 17 Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee report but once the New York Times got a hold of it nearly a month later on December 10, …

The answer is a mixed bag, with the least favorable outcomes in federal court under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. In a recent federal criminal case in Georgia, the Judge in U.S. v. John Mark Shelnutt wrote that, “the request to ‘tweet’ from the courtroom is denied. According to …

What does $30 buy you these days? How about a 90-minute session learning to use Twitter and Facebook, a free lunch, and 1 hour of Florida Bar CLE credit! Come join us on Friday, September 25, 2009 at the Palm Beach County Bar Association offices for the Tweet Meet & …

There is often an unspoken understanding that lawyers who attend hearings which are transcribed need to pay the court reporter to get a copy. Thus, if there are 10 parties to a lawsuit and everyone wants a copy of a 15-minute hearing transcript, court reporters often take the position that …

Considering writing a law blog? Interested in seeing what other firms are doing? Take a peek at the September 2009 Palm Beach Bar Bulletin article, Lawyer Blogs: Overview and Advice from Palm Beach County Bloggers. It’s also included in the column to the right under “Articles.” Note the interesting statistics: …

We’ve written about how to use social networking websites for jury selection and marketing (see right column under Articles) and Facebook has now made it even easier to hunt down its members and their posts. Conceptually, Facebook has been a “closed circuit” social networking site where users limit who can …

The California Supreme Court issued an August 3 opinion holding that an employer could secretly videotape an employee’s closed office without invading workplace privacy rights — and only a few news agencies mentioned the case by name (about 50 outlets referenced the case generally). To give you an idea of …

Chances are if you are reading this, you likely do not need a primer on how to use web applications like Twitter. But, in case you need a refresher or are looking for some Palm Beach legal related tweet material, check out the July/August 2009 Palm Beach Bar Bulletin for …

Because so many people are involved in the everyday step of sending records from a law office to an expert, the mistake of inadvertantly including privileged information occurs now and again. Is it waiver? Will the jury see it? In Nan H. Mullins, D.M.D. v. Alice Tompkins (Benton, Webster and …

The Internet has invigorated questions about depositions which has laid fairly dormant for years: who “owns” a deposition video or transcript? Is it public record? Ever considered posting a video deposition on YouTube? Is that allowed? A quick search suggests there’s more than two thousand video depos on YouTube. We’re …

Look no further than our brethren in Michigan, who hustled out a June 30, 2009 order providing the anti-Twittering jury instruction for trial judges. The rule goes into effect in September. No, it may not be required here in Florida yet, but isn’t it a good idea? Why not offer …

After the flood of attention which lawyers and the media have recently paid to social networking sites, the next logical emphasis will be the ethical use, and mis-use, of such sites by lawyers. Trying to jump start that inquiry, in Internet Social Networking Sites For Lawyers, we hinted at the risks …

While lawyers are typically slow to adopt any new technology, there is a peculiar love affair between lawyers and Twitter. “New” by the way is a relative term. Twitter’s been around since 2006. How many people had heard of it before 2008? Hmm? Even on this site, we’ve found ourselves …

With the increase in social networking websites, there has been a corresponding increase in the “learning curve” as to how to properly use them. The mainstream media and legal profession have shown us that Tweeting jurors, incriminating evidence on MySpace, and Facebook posts about personal misadventures is a bad idea …